


The Soul Machine

by writerfan2013



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: F/M, Five is hopeless at charm, Five misses Dolores, Klaus is tremendously unsubtle, Sass, True Love, everyone is simultaneously too old and too young, my general obsession with time travellers and sarcasm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2019-11-18 10:40:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 16,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18119168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerfan2013/pseuds/writerfan2013
Summary: Five meets a strange girl searching for a misplaced consciousness. She doesn't have anyone to help. He doesn't have time to get involved. But she has a mysterious device he'd like to get his hands on. And maybe a puzzle will take his mind off Dolores... Slight AU post-Season 1, as only Five is a teen. Featuring everyone but especially Five, Klaus, Dolores, angst and true love. Let me know what you think! - Sef...."We should follow her," says Luther."Get the device," says Diego. He reaches instinctively for a blade."I'll do it," says Luther."I'm better," says Diego."You're not better," says Luther.Klaus twists his neck around and yawns. "Wake me when you're done, I've seen this episode.""Five should do it," says Ben.Everyone jumps."He's right," says Luther to Five. "You're her age-""Jeez-""Go and be charming," says Allison. She smiles.Five grimaces. "I literally have no idea how.""We know!" says Klaus. "That's why this is such fun."





	1. False positive

There is a stillness about the girl that Five can't work out. Most people fidget constantly - hair-flicking, smiling and jiggling and generally breaking his train of thought. But she's not like that, not at all.

It's rare, these days, to meet anyone who can sit still, shut up and listen. A valuable quality. She's beautiful, too. Nice eyes. She reminds him of -

He quashes the memory. Not helpful. And he didn't bring his family back to this decade at great personal cost just to wonder about random girls. There's work to do, not least of which is all of them trying to act normal.

Luckily they found this bar, a basement den of misfits and loners, perfect for easing into this century without attracting too much attention. Their apartment is right upstairs in the same antique building, which is convenient. Even better, the bartender just shrugged when Five gave him the death glare and said firmly, "I am twenty-one."

Five likes to come here, partly for the alcohol, mostly to sit in semi-darkness and try to work out their next move. He's the thinker of the family. The others have their own strengths, somewhat, but Five does the cerebral heavy lifting.

And now he's lost his train of thought because some female tiptoed down the steps and sat motionless at the bar, watching the room with the patience of a statue.

He sighs. She has a device she thinks she's concealing in her lap, and she seems especially interested in his siblings. Better find out who she is.

* * *

She sits at the bar, just another customer among the bottles and the red and blue neon, and discreetly watches the scanner. What gave her the misplaced-soul signal?

It's not the fierce-looking guy in black leather. His soul is brimming with vitality and anger and is exactly the right age for his body. It's not the girl drooping beside him either ... what is it with her? Drugged. She looks sweet but she's got something going on. Her soul... the scanner flickers. Her soul is fractured, hissing and crackling with almost more energy than it can contain ...But it's her own.

This guy, then. Huge. His arms are busting out of his coat sleeves. If ever there was a case of wrong body, it's this fella.

Her heart begins to race. Could it be Brent?

The scanner bleeps and bloops, but the big guy isn't her missing friend. The giant slides his arm round the glamorous woman beside him.

Not a peep from the scanner. That girl is satisfied with life and love. Her hand rests on the big guy's thigh, oh yeah.

Sometimes other people's happiness is hard to take.

Ok. Focus. She swings the scanner around, takes in a young guy in a hoody and chinos, leaning against a pillar.

There's something up with him for sure. The scanner display twinkles and fades. She bashes it against her knee and looks again. That's weird. There's barely the tiniest signal. This guy...

He's not Brent. For a start, he's dead.

She takes a closer look at him. He seems ok. Pretty chipper, even.

The people in this bar, they're family, she realises belatedly. All of them. Adopted, presumably, because they look nothing alike. But they have the unmistakable tartness of brothers and sisters, years of contest and resentment and grudging teamwork.

She whips round to scan the last person there, a slender type with soulful eyes and a feather boa.

The scanner goes crazy. Her heart pounds. Brent. It has to be.

The body he's in is rather beautiful. Willowy. Those eyes! Surely she would know Brent, in those glorious eyes?

If it is him, she has to persuade this guy to come back to her place. That shouldn't be a problem from his obvious, glowing availability. Then she needs to get him close to the soul machine and draw out the soul from him. It will then whistle back to Brent, problem solved. The empty body will fly back to its own soul, wherever Brent found it. Looking at this guy, lying in a gutter somewhere. He's gorgeous all right, but damaged.

The crackles on her screen don't indicate a stolen soul, however. Just a soul that's spent some time ... around thousands of other souls. In fact he's with them right now.

She frowns, taps the screen. There are suddenly way too many dots for the number of bodies in the room.

Oh.

Feather boa guy communes with the dead. A lot. He's looking around the bar right now and seeing folks who aren't here. He gives acquaintances a nod, raises his glass at some two dozen more of the unseen.

Whoa. No wonder the scanner went batshit.

She rubs the bridge of her nose. She has to find Brent. First, in time to save him, and second, because she stole the machine and shouldn't even be here.

It's none of this bunch. False reading. Just her luck.

The scanner bleeps again. She looks wearily down at it.

-And there it is, a strong red dot, pulsing steadily, the sure sign of an old soul.

She peers at the crowd, the bizarre family group, but she's already ruled them out.

The scanner must be wrong. It's not Brent. It's a false indicator of a soul in a wrong body. It has to be, because aside from this peculiar bunch, there's nobody here.

She heaves a sigh. "I need a drink."

"Allow me," says a boy's voice beside her, and the scanner goes wild.


	2. The nameless girl

"Buy you a drink," says the kid next to her out of nowhere. He looks about twelve. He's slight, has thick black hair styled in an old fashioned parting, dark blue eyes, and a scowl that appears, at this moment, to be part of him. He's wearing school uniform.

He's also the person, near as she can make out, that set off wild beeping on the scanner, so she needs to talk to him.

"Yes, thanks." She expects him to reach for orange juice or milk and sweetly pour her a plastic beaker of the stuff. Dammit, she will then be expected to drink it and thank him for being such a polite young man.

"I'm guessing gin, double, regular tonic," he says, casting his gaze over her. It lingers for a moment on the device half-concealed under her hand.

His voice is gruff. Maybe he's fifteen. Sixteen? "Uh, thanks." So far the kid is winning at conversation.

The bartender is nowhere to be seen. The kid slides off his stool and around to the business side.

He mixes a G&T with rapid precision and brings it around to her. "I'm Five," he says, holding out his hand. He gives a smile which, if you squinted, might be charming.

He's no way five years old.

"My name," he adds. He grasps her hand and shakes it brusquely like a congressman at his thousandth meet-and-greet. "You are?"

"New in town," she says.

"Caution. A good strategy. Good to meet you. One drink."

Actually two drinks, because he has made himself a scotch on the rocks. She raises her glass to him, and sips. He does likewise, watching her over the rim of his glass with suspicious eyes.

She has hidden the scanner, in her purse while Five made drinks. Gone, nothing to see, it was never here.

The bartender, however, has materialised. "Hey. Pay for those."

Five digs out his wallet. "There is such a thing as customer service."

"There is such a thing as me throwing you into the street, pipsqueak."

The boy leans across the bar, his brows drawn, and shoves his face close to the bartender's. "Try it and we'll see who  _squeaks_  for mercy first." He is no taller than she is, but appears absolutely serious. He places a small bill on the counter. "Keep the change."

"There is no change."

Five raises one eyebrow. "Then you're welcome." He toasts the bartender sarcastically, and drains his glass. "Same again, please." He glances at her. "Another?"

"Uh, thanks."

She watches, mesmerised, as he downs a second strong whisky, sighs, and closes his eyes. As he sets the glass on the counter, she says, "You drink too much."

His eyes jerk open. "I'm not drunk," he says. He stares at her curiously, a frown forming.

She says, "How old are you?" Might as well come right out with it.

"Older than I look."

No kidding. The scanner reckons he's fifty. With a score of a hundred for grouchiness.

"Why were you staring at my family?" he says.

They both turn to look at the others. Dancing has broken out, and the lot of them are swaying to the latest Eurythmics single, except for the furious dark guy and the half-conscious girl with him. She's awake, nodding to the music but leaning heavily on her brother. Feather boa guy is really into it, and the giant is laughing at him, unable to see the circle of dead packed all around and presumably grooving too.

"I mean, apart from the obvious," Five adds.

"I'm looking for someone," she says. "A friend."

Five waits.

She studies him. He's wound as tight as the springs in a '55 Buick. Can he really be Brent? His soul is too old, but not by much. The scanner was probably a dud - they don't leave top-of-the-range equipment lying around - it might be a few years out. Play it safe. "My friend's missing," she says. "I'm looking for him. His family are worried. We're all worried." Brent had cared for her, once. It couldn't hurt to appeal to his emotions.

"Wouldn't he recognise you?" asks Five.

She winces. "Not necessarily. I've changed a lot since he last saw me."

"Then do you see him here?"

She shakes her head. "But he's changed too. I had to really look."

Five jumps lightly off his bar stool. He stands, one hand in his trouser pocket, the other loose and easy at his side. He's slightly built, but he has a deadly air. "Don't waste my time," he says. "What's the device?" He nods at her purse.

Dammit. "Cell phone," she says.

He shakes his head. "Too small." A cell phone, here, is a brick.

"My dad works for the manufacturer. It's a prototype."

He rolls his eyes. "Ok, whatever you say." He gives an artificial smile. "Nice meeting you."

"Wait-"

He saunters away.

* * *

"Oh smooth, very smooth," says Klaus. He twirls the feather boa in the direction of the girl, who is still sitting at the bar. "I  _especially_  liked the way you called her a liar and then left her to pay for the drinks."

"I paid for the first drinks. -That's not the point. The point is she has some kind of device she was using to scan each of us. I think she might be from the Commission. We have to leave." Five fixes each of them with a hard stare. Of course it's typical that they don't take him seriously, even after all he's done.

Luther darts a look at the mystery girl. "She doesn't look like an assassin. She's about sixteen."

Five gives him a filthy look.

"So we leave," says Diego. "And go where? We haven't even started to work on the problem." He cuts his eyes at Vanya.

"I'm still figuring it out, ok?" snaps Five. "I'm working through the probabilities. Cause and effect and particle physics. It's not a cake walk."

"Let's take her out," says Klaus. He throws a pout in the girl's direction. "A single bullet, boom, she falls dramatically to the floor, pausing only to reveal the name of her employer. Five, you do it, she's about your size." He giggles uproariously.

"I don't happen to have my gun," says Five coldly. "And we agreed the best course of action was not to draw attention to ourselves by, say, blowing away a stranger in the bar right under our building."

"Ooh, touchy. Do you  _like_  her?" Klaus trails his finger down Five's sleeve.

"Shut up," says Five.

"She's leaving," says Allison.

The girl is stalking towards the exit.

"We should follow her," says Luther. "Find out where she lives, what she wants."

"Get the device," says Diego. He reaches instinctively for a blade.

"I'll do it," says Luther.

"I'm better," says Diego.

"You're not better," says Luther.

"Here we go," says Klaus. He twists his neck around and yawns. "Wake me when you're done, I've seen this episode."

"Five should do it," says Ben.

Everyone jumps, even Five. They're just not used to him being there.

Ben says nothing more, just gazes mildly at them.

"He's right," says Luther to Five. "You're her age-"

"Jeez-"

"-You can befriend her, get close her to her, find out what's going on. Without arousing her suspicions."

"And no arousing anything else," says Klaus, nudging Five. "I know what you kids are like."

There is a pause while everyone rolls their eyes and Five lets out a long breath.

"Go and be charming," says Allison. She smiles.

Five grimaces. "I literally have no idea how."

"We know!" says Klaus. "That's why this is such fun."

The girl is out the door. Five starts after her. "Pack," he says to the others. "Just in case."


	3. A little swagger

Five skips the stairs and jumps right to the street. Outside is a perfect mid September night. The mild autumn air slips greasily over Five's skin; streetlamps offer their peculiar pink twilight. He breathes deep. It's 1989, but it smells of nowhere in particular. Except for the shapes of the cars, it might be 2019. A touch less climate change, perhaps. He sniffs. Definitely further from the apocalypse, which is a reassuring thought.

 

 

There is time. Time for everything.

 

He spots the mystery girl at the end of the block. She's heading around the corner, walking quickly. Even from here, he can tell she's uncomfortable - nervous. She's not used to the city.

 

He strolls after her. It's late, but not that late. Sirens wail up and down the parallel streets. The hotdog stands are still open. Groups of young men lounge in doorways, cigarettes between their lips.

 

Smoking. There's a vice he never got into.

 

_Don't worry, the drinking's killing you quickly enough._

 

Dolores' voice echoes in his memory. Sometimes it's like she's still here, he knows her so well. "I have plenty to keep myself occupied without nicotine."

 

Just once, though, it would be intriguing to see what smoking was like. A fine Cuban cigar, nothing cheap and nasty... Just once.

 

_Your just onces never are._

 

How many times has he heard her say that? A lot. Thirty years she tried to keep him on the straight and narrow, and thirty years he complained about it. On the other hand, she wasn't perfect either. She bottled stuff up, kept it inside. Retaining the air of mystery, she called it. Not letting him help, more like. She was so damn independent ...

 

He shakes himself. Two minutes alone and he's losing track. Just tiredness - he hardly sleeps these days - but it's a shortcoming he doesn't like in himself. Focus. The strange girl. The device. Go.

 

He jumps to the corner of the next block over and leans on a lamppost as the girl walks towards him.

 

Be charming, Allison said. He braces himself, summons a smile as the girl draws level with him.

 

"I'm sorry about before."

 

She startles, stops dead. Her hand goes to her purse.

 

"If I wanted to rob you I wouldn't waste time on conversation," he says. "Or apologies."

 

She gazes at him. "Are you going to help me find my friend?"

 

_No._ "Yes."

 

_Liar_ , say her eyes. She nods, though, and gestures at him to walk with her.

 

Their strides match. They're the same height, which is odd. He steals sideways glances at her as they walk the night streets. How old is she?  Older, a little, than his current container. Seventeen, maybe. A child. Why is a child running around pointing secret devices at strangers?

 

A car swerves across the road and heads straight for them, lights blazing. It bumps up the curb twenty feet away at full speed and judders right at them 

 

The girl squeaks and turns her face away. Five is ready to jump out of danger, but the car swings back straight and continues down the road. Five sees two guys, arguing, grabbing at the wheel. "Morons. They'll kill someone, or themselves."

 

The girl is shivering.

 

"Are you ok?"

 

She shrugs one shoulder.

 

"I'm guessing you're not from around here," he says. He sees an opportunity. "Do you want me to walk you home?"

 

She doesn't give him any flim flam about his age or his size, which makes a welcome change. "Yes please." She names a neighbourhood that is thirty years from gentrification. "Hotel Deluxe."

 

He doubts that very much.

 

_Keep your judgement to yourself._

 

He blinks.

 

"Sorry," she says.

 

He's not sure what for. Did she just speak? He was listening to Dolores, or, more accurately, imagining what Dolores would say if she were here.

 

"Ah, it's fine," he says, with an attempt at affability. "Say, you never told me your name." He'll look it up later, in the paper telephone directory.

 

"No, I did not." She throws a glance at him. Her face is wan, but holds quiet defiance.

 

Five experiences a peculiar twinge. The girl is up to something, but standing close to him, she seems so harmless. Of course, his own exterior is currently pretty innocuous and he could still take out a small army given ten minutes and a butter knife. All the same, he can't believe the girl is an assassin. She's terrified of traffic, for Pete's sake. "Are you all right?"

 

"Yes."

 

Boy, she doesn't give much. "You want anything, stop for a minute?" After all, not everybody has walked across an ashen continent the way he has.

 

She shakes her head. They carry on walking, the girl casting nervous glances at the traffic. Other than the street sounds, they proceed in silence. 

 

Five thinks. He gestures at a passing car. "Trauma, right? You were in a car wreck."

 

Her mouth drops open.

 

"Probability of it happening twice is low," he says. "Probability of it being as serious this time around, even lower." That's not actually how probability works, but it sounds reassuring.

 

The girl frowns.

 

"Confidence is ninety percent of being out at night," he adds. "Walk tall, let everyone know you belong here." He adds a little swagger. He hasn't done that in ... well, since he first travelled back.

 

Dolores liked his swagger. Well, she liked everything about him. That was one of her many good points.

 

The swagger dissolves.

 

"You're not him, are you?" says the girl. She stops and faces Five.

 

This is not a good place to stop for a chat. It's a narrow street with big gaps between streetlamps and a dozen alleys to either side, every one of them doubtless a dead end from which bad guys can step out brandishing weapons. Five scans around and sees multiple ways they could get themselves robbed and murdered in the next three minutes if they stand still.

 

"No, I'm not," he says, "and let's walk and talk about it, ok?"

 

The girl says, "I knew it. He's always upbeat, punchy. You're just... so sad." Her eyes widen as she gazes into his face. 

 

"Listen," says Five. "We have to move. This isn't a great neighbourhood." He grips her elbow and propels her along.

 

"Let go of me."

 

He does. Dolores was always very clear on consent. "Just keep walking."

 

They hurry on, but it's too late. A couple of guys peel off from a shadowy doorway and stalk towards them, hands casually at their belts.

 

"Shit." Five has nothing with him by way of weaponry, and his only advantage is that he looks like easy meat. Trouble is, so does the girl. "Get behind me."

 

"Hand over the bag, lady," says the first guy. He tweaks the gun in his pocket suggestively.

 

"Do it," mutters Five. While these thugs are distracted by the contents, he will attack. Two swift jumps to punch each of them - one in the throat, the other in the crotch - should set him up nicely to finish the job.

 

The girl wraps her arms around her purse, holds it to her chest. She lifts her chin.

 

"Oh, you don't wanna give us the bag. I get it." The first guy make a a big grin full of gold teeth and nastiness. The second guy laughs. "What you got must be pretty valuable." They step nearer. Either one of them is a foot taller than Five or the girl.

 

The girl glares at them.

 

"Hey," says Five.

 

The first guy ignores him and snatches the purse. He pushes the girl to the ground.

 

"Ok," says the second guy while the first guy casually goes through the purse, tossing away tissues, pens, various feminine items. "While you're down there -" He leers, and looms over the girl, who scrambles to get up. She hasn't made a sound.

 

It's as if Five isn't even there. Which is irritating, but useful.

 

"Leave me alone," says the girl, from the ground. "And give my purse back." 

 

"What's this?" says the first guy, and holds up the girl's scanning device.

 

"A mistake," says Five, and jumps.

 

 


	4. Something heroic

The robbers will find the scanner. This will be bad news for them because every piece of equipment comes with anti-tamper protection. However it's also bad news for her, because she needs it.

The guy leering at her is, horrifyingly, undoing his pants.

The sidewalk is hard and painful. She scrabbles to sit up. "Leave me alone," she says. "And give my purse back."

The first guy starts emptying her purse, and sure enough, there's the scanner.

Five is going to do something heroic. She can just tell. He's standing, blazer unbuttoned, hands clenched at his sides, his narrowed eyes flickering all around.

Fifty or twelve, he thinks he's going to stop this. He's going to be brave, he'll get them both killed, and she's nowhere near the soul machine.

The first robber is shaking the scanner, poking it, trying to get it to switch on. It won't, because he is not her, but if he keeps trying then in another five seconds, bad things will happen.

She needs to warn Five, but he's talking. "A mistake," he says.

At that instant, the scanner explodes.

She throws her arms in front of her face and reaches out to grab Five and pull him aside as much as she can - but he's not there.

The scanner rains thick black ink and hair-fine needles onto her head. Her scalp is punctured, and her arms. The robbers scream - they got the anti-tamper bomb right in the face. She rolls aside and peeks between her fingers.

Five bursts into existence in a flash of blue light above and between the two thugs - and right in the midst of the disintegrating scanner.

He cries out, hits the ground. Blackness falls on him, spreads from his head. The two men fall too, shruekung and tearing at their eyes, then lie still. The scanner lies discarded on its side, spewing sharpness in all directions.

For a few seconds, there is silence except the soft hiss of tiny needles striking the pavement.

She needs to move. She drags herself upright, fingers over her eyes. "Soul machine," she says clearly, and the hail of damage ceases.

The two robbers lie bleeding, senseless.

She gathers up the scanner, and her purse. The scanner might still work, but nothing's certain. This could be the end of her search.

Five is curled on the hard ground with his hands over his face.

She bends down, touches his shoulder. "Are you hurt?"

He groans, rolls over. "No."

You'd think he would be a better liar.

"I can't lie properly when I'm in pain," he says, just as if he heard her. Then his eyes open, and he gapes up at her from an ink-coated face.

She holds out her hand. "Here."

He's in a bad way. She hauls him to his feet. His face and hair are coated in sticky black ink. Needles protrude from the sleeves of his blazer. His knees are bleeding.

She has to help him. Hotel Deluxe is nearby. She gets her arm around his waist. He mumbles a complaint but, half blinded by ink and stuck with needles like a thousand cactus prickles, he can't resist. "Come on," she says. "Hold on to me."

He rallies and places one foot in front of the other, she leading him along. Even now, she can sense his strength, his iron determination. The robbers have been wiped out, but this Five keeps going.

"Nearly there," she says. It's just as well because she is also wearing a lot of ink. Luckily their attackers soaked up the worst of it. She hopes. Five was right there - in a flash - in an impossible move.

He's slim and wiry under her arm, and does not seem like someone who can teleport. Maybe he karate -jumped? Some kind of acrobatic move? However he did it, he took a massive hit of the scanner's defences. She hopes the robbers got it in the eye. She hopes Five didn't.

He is silent with effort, stumbling. "It's all right, I've got you," she adds.

The scrappy entrance to Hotel Deluxe is now just a few paces away.

He says, "What do you mean, too sad?" and faints.

* * *

 

The hotel already think she's a teenage runaway, which is kind of hilarious. Now they assume she's a teenage runaway with a boyfriend.

The benefit of this particular hotel, however, is that they don't care.

She pays the clerk to carry Five up in the clanking elevator to the sixth floor room she's made her base. Then she pays him again because ink came off Five and onto the guy's clothes.

At last the clerk leaves, richer, and she is alone with an unconscious boy on her queen sized bed.

She says, "Hey," but he doesn't respond. Gingerly, she rolls him into the recovery position, ready to jump back at any point because she's pretty sure he hates being manhandled, and she's none too keen on touching him either.

That done, she wipes her hands on a towel and considers how to remove ink and needles. The shower, but she can't do that while he's dressed, and unresponsive.

No, she's not going to undress him.

"Good," says Five, and opens his eyes. "You talk to yourself, you know that?"

"I do not." She waves at him not to try to sit up. "You need to take off everything and check for any deep wounds."

"I know what to do." He grimaces, ridiculous under the ink, and slowly sits.

"The ink has needles in it," she says. "Be careful when you wash your face."

He touches his cheek, winces. "You got some too."

"I was further away."

He glances around. "Your hotel."

She nods.

Five swings his legs gradually off the bed, places his feet on the floor. "You got any coffee?"

"Get in the shower," she says. "I'll call down for coffee."

"This place has room service?"

This place has anything you want so long as you can pay. "Yes."

"Maybe it's not as much of a dump as it looks."

_Maybe you could be a little more polite given I just rescued your bony ass._

He stands. "I'll get in the shower." He pauses in the doorway to her miniscule ensuite. He's a bedraggled figure, a boy in a suit, dripping with theft-deterrent blackness. "Uh, thanks. By the way." He hesitates, gives a flash of a smile, brightness in amongst the ink.

It's a surprisingly nice smile. _You could be charming, if you tried._

His expression turns smug. He disappears into the bathroom and locks the door with a loud click.

_Yeah, if you tried harder than that. I'll just rescue you, loan you my shower, and make coffee, will I?_

"Great." The shower starts up.

She frowns. Did he just call through the closed door?

The shower hisses and splashes. In the bedroom, pipes clang. Maybe she imagined it.

She picks up the phone and calls Reception.


	5. Not bored

By the time Five emerges from the bathroom, the nameless girl is sitting on the bed, drinking coffee. A large jug steams beside her on the nightstand, plus an extra mug, and a bottle of scotch. Interesting.

 

He tightens the hotel bathrobe a touch. His clothes are washed and hanging over the bathtub, on the assumption that this fifth-rate hotel does not offer a laundry service. Frankly, he's amazed they do coffee. Nonetheless it means he's bound to stay a while to let his clothes dry, so the alcohol is a welcome sight.

 

The girl smirks. Then she heaves a sigh.

 

She's still splattered with ink, and those needles.

 

"What are they?" he asks, plucking one from her sleeve.

 

"Organic. They eventually dissolve if they do penetrate the skin. But for a couple of days they light up a scanner, if you point one at them."

 

"Hmmm." The needle between his finger and thumb is translucent, and as fine as a bumblebee hair. "The ink?"

 

"In case you don't have a scanner. It doesn't easily wash off."

 

"I noticed." His face has a certain tanned aspect to it, despite scrubbing. That's the least of his worries. He wanders around her hotel room, poking at things. "I think it would be simpler if you just told me what was going on."

 

She rises. "It's my turn in the shower. Drink coffee."

 

"The device-"

 

She goes in the bathroom, tosses his clothes at him. He ducks, just manages to avoid getting a faceful of damp shirt. "They'll dry quicker on the radiator," she says, and slams the bathroom door.

 

Five peels wet garments from his shoulders and spreads them over the hot radiator under the window.

 

The girl's room holds no clues as to what she's up to. No handy map of the city, punctured with pushpins and crosscrossed with string. She hasn't left a diary lying open on the nightstand, displaying the name, number and address of her last meeting. Klaus would be disappointed. Five snorts.

 

The room is neat and free from personality. An arms-length inspection of her small suitcase shows bland, forgettable clothes and toiletries. A single black negligee, a froth of chiffon like something a Fifties screen goddess might wear, is the only hint of intrigue. Also, he cannot find that scanner.

 

She's not making it easy for him. But then, if she were, he'd be bored.

 

He's not bored.

 

Five grunts in surprise, and pours himself coffee.

 

* * *

 

She fiddles with the scanner, under cover of the noise of the shower, and against all odds it works. She points it through the door at Five, and it gives her the reading: young body, old soul.

 

It's not Brent, though. Brent might not recognise her, but he'd know a scanner when he saw one, and would run a mile.

 

He wouldn't offer to walk her home because the car thing freaked her out. He wouldn't come back to her place and sit around drinking coffee.

 

A thought strikes her. She puts her eye to the crack of the bathroom door.

 

Five is still in the bedroom, dressed and sauntering about, one hand in his pocket, the other clutching a large tumbler of scotch.

 

It might still be Brent. Maybe he'd know she'd bring a soul machine with her, trying to fix him. Maybe he's just waiting for her to give away where it is.

 

She sets aside the scanner and gets dressed. If, if, if. It's no way to live. _Sometimes you just have to take a risk._

 

All the same, before she opens the door she takes another peek into the bedroom - just in time to see Five vanish in a flash of blue light, and reappear at the window. He blinks out of existence once more and rematerialises, stretched out on the bed.

 

She draws back, her heart pounding.

 

He's definitely not Brent, then.

 

So who is he?


	6. Nebulous drifts

Five hears two noises simultaneously. First, the bathroom door handle creaking as it turns. Second, someone outside in the hall, jamming a screwdriver into the hotel room's lock.

"Wait," he hisses to the girl behind the bathroom door. "I assume your visitors usually knock."

"I don't have visitors."

"Then stay there while I see who's calling."

He jumps to the corridor outside, end of the hall. At the girl's door are two men, each the size of Luther, each carrying large, deadblack weapons like howitzers, or Uboats. They are forcing the lock and not being too subtle about it.

He flashes back into the bedroom. The girl is standing by the bed, eyes wide. "Two charmers with big guns and serious expressions. You want me to let them in?"

She swallows. "They've found me. Oh no."

"Ok we need to we creative. Let's go." He wrenches open the window. "Unless you want to stay and see what they want."

"I know what they want, " she says. "They want to kill me."

Five springs onto the window ledge. There's what the health and safety authorities might class as a fire escape outside - a mesh gangway leading to a ladder that only a rat would enjoy. It's not good, but it looks better than those men and their weapons.

He doesn't know what the weapons are, and he's seen a lot of guns in his time. Two thousand years of time have never shown him something like those submarine-shaped weapons.

Or the girl's device, which she has in her hand.

He thinks all this in two seconds while the door lock grinds and squeaks. "Come on."

He holds out his hand to the girl, bodily hauls her onto the ledge, and says, "You go first."

"We're on the sixth floor," she says, but she's moving, step step step along the metal, not looking at the long zigzag of the ladder down to the dark alley below.

Five waits til she's climbing. "I'll just ask them to leave."

He jumps to the corridor again and snatches the screwdriver from the man jamming the lock. Jumps away.

-Flashes behind the second guy and sticks him in the neck, pulls back the screwdriver and jumps away while the first guy is still saying, "Hey."

The second guy drops.

Five appears while the first guy is turning to see why his friend screamed. He thinks about the eyes, but remembers he doesn't know what the hell is going on, so flips the driver around and jabs the guy with the butt end, hard, in one eye socket.

When the guy flails, Five kicks his legs out from under him and stamps on his hands

The giant weapons are scattered in the floor. Five thinks about taking one. Then he thinks of the device, and ink, and needles.

The two men are groaning and cursing on the carpet. Five says, "What do you want?"

The neck guy says, "We'll get you Brent." He swipes at Five.

"I'm not Brent," says Five. "Who's the girl?"

"Criminal. Just like you." He reaches for the nearest gun.

Five kicks the weapon a way and it spurts green flame. Both men shriek.

Five leaps bsck. Emerald sparks singe his socks. The carpet is smouldering. "Interesting." He jumps away. Let the concierge clear that up.

He materialises beside the girl as she steps off the last rung of the ladder, and grabs her arm.

 _Hey_.

He lets go. "Come on."

They run.

* * *

 

Far away, in a neighbourhood full of Italian lockups and Russian bars, Five and the girl walk into an all night diner called the Galaxy.

The place is empty bar them, which suits Five fine. He slides into a booth at the back by the rear exit. The girl sits opposite.

Overhead, stars and planets speckle a dark blue painted sky. Constellations whirl between nebulous drifts. The world has fallen away and there's no sign of solid ground.

At three a.m. on a dark September night, Five appreciates the irony.

A frowning, aproned waiter appears and stands beside their table.

"Coffee," says Five. He glances at the girl.

_Just water._

It takes Five a second to realise the waiter cannot hear her.

"Water," he says.

The waiter blinks slowly, eyes narrowing.

"Thanks," adds Five.

He drums his fingers during the entire wait for their order. When he has a mug of the black stuff in his fist, and the girl has her slender fingers wrapped around a glass of iced water, he stops.

"Ok," he says. "Now is the part where you tell me exactly what's going on."

She gazes at him, expression serene. _Or what, you'll walk out and leave me to pay for drinks?_

It's her voice, but clearer, melodic, a message straight to his cerebral cortex. When he hears her like that, it's like music in his spine.

"Listen," he says. "There's something really bizarre happening here."

"You teleported, for example."

"What did those two guys want? Who are you? How can I ... hear what you're thinking? What the hell is all this? Tell me. Uh, please."

She smiles. _You first._

Before he can argue, the diner door bangs open and a tall, willowy figure wearing a kimono and Doc Martens wafts in.

"Well hello, look at you two lovebirds, don't let me interrupt I'm sure."

The newcomer slides into the booth beside Five. He smells of whisky and Chanel Number 5.

Five scowls. "Hello, Klaus."


	7. Undiscovered forest pool

"Why is there even such a thing as a soul machine?" says Klaus. "What's it for?"

It has taken quite some time for Five to summarise the existence of the Umbrella Academy, superpowers, an apocalypse and some _en masse_ time travel. He orders more coffee and water, plus, revoltingly at three am, mac and cheese for Klaus, and as the order arrives the girl says flatly, "I stole a soul machine and now the Registrars want it back."

She looks directly at Five and says _Thank you for helping me._

There's a sweetness in her eyes that he can't look away from. He has no idea how to reply, so gives an upwards nod and gulps coffee.

Klaus attacks his food with a plastic fork. "You two! Stop honeygazing, start talking, kiddo. _Soul machine_. Mmm, even the name gives me a delicious sexual _frisson_ , like an Italian airline steward."

Five inches away from Klaus' fragrant, cheesy plate. "Go on," he says to the girl.

"It transfers souls," she says. "From one container to another."

"Container," says Klaus around a mouthful of pasta. "How very clinical. Very cold. You're like those guys that work in the morgue, always a sandwich in one hand and the other rammed up some poor sap's chest cavity."

Five glares at him. Tilts his coffee cup at the girl to continue.

"It started out as a medical device," she says. "To save lives when people were dying before their time. And -"

"People born into the wrong body," Five says. "Of course." It makes sense. If you could fix that without years of drugs and surgery, why wouldn't you? "So who are the Registrars?"

She says, "The Register exists to check and correct soul assignments. The scanner you saw was developed later. To prevent young people confusing wrong body issues with ordinary unhappiness."

"Wow, super patronising," says Klaus. "Does it deliver their verdict in a nursery rhyme?"

"Only medically trained staff are allowed to use the machine," she says stiffly. "And only at the request of the patient."

"And yet here you are," he says. "Nary a doctor's degree in sight."

Five frowns. Klaus has a point.

"I'm qualified," she says. "I'm older than I look."

"You look like someone who raided her daddy's bag for the good stuff and come out with this instead," says Klaus. "No offence." He flashes her a radiant smile.

Five turns his gaze to the girl.

She does not deign to reply. She's certain she's right. He has to admire that she doesn't waste time arguing.

There's a stillness about her that he likes. She doesn't jolt or jump when she's surprised, she just withdraws into herself to think, to consider. He says, "So Brent. How did you know him, why are the Registrars hunting him?"

"He lived next door to me. We hung out." She shrugs.

Klaus points a cheesy fork at her. "Don't elaborate. We understand what hanging out means, don't we, Five. Drink, drugs, crazy, meaningless sex that leaves you feeling dirty and used in the morning."

She looks at the floor.

"I mean do elaborate," Klaus says. "All the sordid details, please."

"Shut up," says Five. The girl hasn't answered his question.

"Brent knew I worked for the Register. He persuaded me to show him the soul machine." She makes a _moue_. "He used it."

Five says, "And now you're trying to get him back before the Register enforcers catch up with him?"

"Yes. He used it without authority, without knowung what he was doing." She winces.

"Brent is a dick," says Klaus.

"You are in no position to criticise," says Five. He gives a meaningful glance at Klaus' dogtags.

"Ouch."

The girl blinks back tears. "If I don't get his soul back, he'll die," she says. "His soul left his body. Without a soul, the body withers away. Without a body, souls are just ... lost." She glances at Klaus, who gives a Tell me about it wave. "I have to find his soul and put it back in his body."

Five watches her, the coffee cup clenched in his fist.

"His family are at the hospital. They have no idea what's happened. He has a day or two, at most. Then he'll die. And it will be my fault."

"Sounds like it's Brent's fault," says Five.

"I should never have shown him the machine."

 _Then why did you?_ "Where is it now," Five asks.

"You're not touching it," she says. _No matter how sweet you are._

_Well, that answers how Brent got to it._

_Do not make assumptions about me._

"Hey, lovebirds." Klaus swipes his hand in between their faces. "How are we going to find this lost soul?"

" _We_ aren't doing anything," snaps Five. "He could be anywhere. What can we possibly do?" He shrugs at the girl. He is, frankly, too busy for this. There are only a few weeks before he and his siblings are born, and he has to figure out everything before then and fix the apocalypse/no apocalypse timeline. He's busy, dammit. And he's alone.

Klaus snorts. "Well forgive me. I just thought you might need someone who, not to blow my own horn, is an expert in disembodied souls. But no, you're totally right, it's _fine_ , we'll just leave behind this golden opportunity to put you back in your wrinkly, ageing body, and swan off home leaving this young lady with her magic box feeling hurt and resentful and _definitely_ not owing you a massive favour for helping her friend. Great, that's sorted, let's go." He jumps to his feet.

 _God, I hate it when he's right._ "All right! We'll help," Five says to the girl.

She casts him a withering look.

"Where's the scanner," asks Klaus.

To Five's outrage, the girl produces the thing, tweaks some setting, and offers it to Klaus.

Klaus smirks. He points it at himself. Fifteen signals appear on the screen. "Ha! Yes, there they are, my constant companions. I think I prefer them as dots." He pauses. "No, they're not going to put you in a body, Frank. Definitely not the body of a nubile young woman." He pouts at the girl.

"Ignore him," says Five. He jerks his head at Klaus, who turns the scanner in Five's direction.

"That's how I found you," she says. "I thought you might be him. But your soul isn't in the wrong body at all."

Five examines the display. "Hmmm, correct body, incorrect physical age."

She nods.

"Brent's old?" says Five. "How old?"

"Younger than you," she says. "A little. We were at school together."

Five blinks. Gradually he catches up to it. He remembers the vintage clothes in her case, her general self assurance. Of course.

This girl, with her intense eyes and stillness like an undiscovered forest pool, this isn't her first body. If he had to guess, it's probably not even her second, or third.

Which means it's possible to keep moving consciousness around. You can pick and choose your body.

Interesting.

Five says, "What will the Registrars do when they find you?"

The girl doesn't flinch. "They use the machine to suck out your soul and leave you floating. Without a container, you die."

"But Brent, he went to a body?"

"I think so. A younger body. It's the commonest abuse of the machine, old people taking over young bodies."

"I imagine there's a thriving black market."

"It's one of the things we're here to prevent. The Register." She squirms. "And now I'm on the wrong side. Unless I can find Brent and take back his soul."

Klaus yawns dramatically. "I'm bushed. What say we sleep on these mindbending revelations and find naughty boy Brent in the morning? I've had enough metaphysical weirdness to last me until at least 1990."

"Stay at our apartment," Five tells the girl. "My brothers and sisters might be mentally deficient but they're good guard dogs."

"It's his charm that makes him so popular," says Klaus.

"All right," says the girl. She gives Klaus a little smile. He offers her his arm like a guy in a black and white movie, and they head for the door.

Five flexes his wrists - he has a tendency to ball his hands into fists - and follows them out.


	8. If he had a list

The Hargreeves' apartment covers three storeys above the bar. The place is old and peeling and echoes with music and trouble from the bar down below, but it used to be a boarding house with a dozen bedrooms, and that's lucky. None of them is good at sharing. They take turns at babysitting Vanya in her room; the rest of the time they tend to slope off, each to his or her own space. And there are plenty of rooms to spare.

 

 

 

 

Allison offers their guest a room on the top floor, and takes her off to arrange nightwear and other feminine concerns. Five minds his own business in the giant kitchen, makes a sandwich that might be dinner, or breakfast, sits down to eat it and notices Klaus and Ben muttering at the far end of the room.

 

"Do you think he used to kiss it goodnight?"

 

"Shut up, he'll hear you."

 

"But it's weird, isn't t. I mean he's not really a kid. He's a grandad."

 

"Klaus, shut up."

 

"I'm not a grandad," says Five, without looking up from his sandwich. From across the room he ought not to have been able to hear. The benefits of youth. "I'm childless.The apocalypse was pretty much a singles zone."

 

"Is that why you got it on with a doll," says Klaus before Ben can stop him.

 

Five says nothing.

 

"I take your silence as a guilty admission," says Klaus. "Are there any other household objects I should wipe down?"

 

Five picks up his sandwich and jumps away to the hall.

 

"Touchy, touchy," says Klaus.

 

"You're an ass," says Ben.

 

In the hall Allison and the girl have reappeared. Allison assigns Five the task of showing the girl to her room.

 

He agrees with only minor eye roll. In silence they climb the stairs, she carrying a bundle of clothes, he finishing his sandwich. "This is you," he says, opening her door and stepping back.

 

The girl goes in, dumps clothes in the bed and comes back. She switches on the light.

 

Outside everything is still black. In autumn, even this crazy hour is a while off daylight.

 

"We'll rest, then start looking for Brent," says Five. "Klaus can help." He has some doubts about Klaus' reliability, but his powers are strong, no question of that.

 

"I'll try to sleep. I'm worried about the soul machine."

 

Five nods. "You were in a car accident," he says.

 

She sighs, leans on the door jamb.

 

"It didn't kill you, obviously."

 

"The Register came wirh a soul machine, saved me. Well, not my body."

 

He's curious. Before he can suppress it the thought has emerged. _What did you look like?_

 

"Older," she says. She gestures at her teenage form.

 

He flashes back to the suitcase, the negligee. The last remnant of her old shape.

 

_Nice that you rummaged through my things._

_I wanted to know who you were!_

_I had the same question but I stopped short of ransacking your stuff while you were out cold on the bed._

 

That's a fair point.

 

"I was only looking for information," he says. _Not examining your underwear._ "Jeez!"

 

He hears her laughter, melodic up and down his spine. "You know, there's a moment where a man should stop digging."

 

"Yeah."

 

"Well, goodnight."

 

"Right."

 

_You literally have no idea that I want you to kiss me._

_What?_

 

"I like you," she says. "I like that you're like me. I can talk to you."

 

That ought to be impossible. But then, so much of his life has been impossible, why not a telepathic girl? "It's because your soul's displaced," he says slowly. "And so is mine."

 

"I guess. But nobody's had powers, of any sort, for a hundred years."

 

"Apart from my family."

 

"That doesn't start until next month."

 

So she _was_ paying attention. "Kind of why we're here," he says. "To find out why powers reappeared, where my dear father got the idea to adopt these babies, how it all started."

 

She glances around. Of course, they're alone in the upstairs hall of the scruffy apartments. She leans close. "There's a myth that the Register came from elsewhere. Not Earth."

 

Her breath is on his ear. "That makes sense," he says slowly. "The tech. They're like nothing I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot of weapons in my time."

 

"I've seen a lot of death," she whispers.

 

He supposes she's seen a lot of heartache too. Families choosing whether to let someone die in their right body or be transferred to a willing, maybe unwilling stranger. Moral grey area doesn't begin to cover what she does. Working for the Register is to pat back the debt, to pay for a new body and another chance at life. The price is high. Even the Commission has an end to a contract. But the girl told them, last night, that working for the Register is forever.

 

And now she's saying the Register might not be from here. What about the Commission, then?

 

His brain whirls, but she's simply standing with him, looking into his face, as serene and beautiful as a statue.

 

She smiles. _It's ok._

_It is not ok. Aliens -_

 

He's not entirely sure how it happens, but one moment he's thinking that he should have known from her eyes that she's not a kid, and a moment after that, his hand is on the back of her neck and he's kissing her.

 

It's a one-second thing, then he jolts back in horror.

 

"Night then," she says. She turns in her doorway and shines a sweet smile on him.

 

He stares, unthinking. Then jumps away and materialises in the blessed sanctuary of his bedroom.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Five flakes out on the saggy bed. There's work to do tomorrow,  and for all his strength he needs sleep. So naturally, with an hour at most before dawn, sleep will not come.

 

He turns his head to glance at the scrappy chair in the corner, but of course it is empty. He shifts his weight on the pillows - his shoulders ache - and shuts his eyes.

 

He misses Dolores. Mostly it's a low ache, like noise from an airport a couple of miles away; you know it's there, but you've learned to ignore it.

 

Tonight though, the pain is sharp and close. Yet again he curses himself for not bringing her with him. He could have managed it so easily. But he set her aside, deliberately ended things.

 

He guesses a part of him resisted the idea that she was real. His logical brain tells him she was an inanimate object, a thing, and that years of solitude twisted up his mind into thinking she seemed real.

 

Most of him just longs to hear her voice again. The sass. Sure, sometimes she would nag him - the drinking, the endless work, the days and weeks when he neglected her to follow some shiny new theory. But right now he would give anything to see her face, have her critique his outfit, tell him to stop overdoing things.

 

Even though most often she sat, silent and still, he always knew she watched him, followed his theories.

 

It wasn't a one way street. Settling in the old library, that was her idea _. Find somewhere you can be at home_ , she'd said. _A soul needs to feel at ease._

 

_In this lifeless place?_

 

_Even here._

 

The library had been the obvious response. He made camp there not long after, and  she was happy that he had taken her advice, and lay off the carping  for a while.

 

He liked the carping, actually. It reminded him who he was. More than a brain on legs  trying to turn back time and save the world. More than the numbered adoptee of a warped genius. He was a man, a person, and Dolores always reminded him of that. _Sleep. Eat. Look after yourself._ The nurturing urges all came from her.

 

Now here he is caught up in a hunt for a stolen soul, with a girl whose name he doesn't  even know. How has that happened?

 

She was sweet enough, he supposes. He shouldn't have kissed her.

 

_I just wanted to know what it was like._

 

_I taught you what it was like,_ Dolores' echo says.

 

He closes his eyes. _You showed me the mental thrill. You know we were never much for the physical side._ There had been some major practical barriers to that.

 

Well, now he can cross kissing a girl off his list, if he had a list. That stuff just isn't important. More, it doesn't last the way conversation does.

 

He sighs.

 

Outside his blurry window, the first birds begin to squawk.

 

 

 

 

 


	9. Dry fountain

 

She likes the way he moves, sharp and precise. He wastes no time. He's a busy man.

 

She pauses in the act of dressing - a black sweater and pants loaned by Allison, plain but made of the softest, richest fabric - and smiles.

 

Him being kind of the right age for both her, and her current container, is a massive bonus. Huge. It is hard to overstate how difficult it is to find a boyfriend when you appear seventeen but can remember the Blitz.

 

Five solves that problem. In a couple of years he and she could walk down the street together and nobody would bat an eye. Meanwhile she won't have to put up with any teen boy shenanigans, which frankly were bad enough when teens were invented. All that pompadour hair and turned-up collar stuff, blue suede shoes, gimme a break.

 

Five has conversation. He's been around. He's literally seen the end of the world and will have plenty to talk about.

 

When they were in the Galaxy, she felt like she could listen to him all night. The things he's seen. The things he had to do. And no cry for sympathy, no fuss. She likes that, yes, she likes that a lot.

 

He's handsome, too. Not a face you would easily tire of. His eyes! She'd thought Klaus had the pretty eyes, but now Five gets her vote. Nice eyes, conversation and literally mature for his age, he's damn near perfect.

 

The only trouble is, he wants her to put him back in his old body.

 

She sighs.

 

If only that were her biggest problem. She needs to find Brent, drain him out of whatever illegal host he's currently occupying, and give the soul machine back to the Register. If she's lucky they won't find her and kill her first.

 

Blue light flickers under her bedroom door. Then comes a three rap knock.

 

She opens the door. Five's in the hall, hands in pockets.

 

He gives her a cold look. If he's embarrassed by last night, she can't see it. "Breakfast."

 

"Morning. Is Klaus ready?"

 

He vanishes without replying.

 

She lets out a laugh. _Nothing says Unthreatened like fleeing a conversation_. "I'll take that as a Yes."

 

Five appears twenty feet away, leaning on the wall. "Take it however you like. But if you want decent coffee come now, because I'm making it." _And I didn't have to tell you that._

 

_You are just so cranky in the morning._

 

Downstairs Klaus is draped over the couch in the living room, complaining.

 

Five makes coffee, pours for all of them with a martyred air. It's eleven am and he is already disappointed with everyone. She ignores his bad temper and eats toast. Then she makes more and gives it to Klaus.

 

"You are a saint." Klaus clasps her hands. Five vanishes in disgust.

 

She shakes her head.

 

"You _are_. But I have to tell you honey, I'm not on the market, sorry."

 

He makes such a pathetic face she laughs out loud.

 

"Oh, _my_ mistake," says Klaus. "Look at my red face. It's him you like. I understand." He drops his voice to a stage whisper. "Don't get your hopes up. He's taken."

 

_Oh_.

 

Klaus pats her arm. "Well, he was. It was all rather odd."

 

"That's ok."

 

"His lady friend, well, she was ... somewhat artificial. ... She was _literally_ not all there. Well, same goes for my little bro. I mean, you know, the apocalypse..." Klaus twirls his finger beside his ear. "Cuckoo."

 

"Ok, I get it."

 

"I mean it takes all sorts but his tastes are a little extreme even for me. I at least like my lovers not to be figments. Or, you know, made in Taiwan..."

 

She has no idea what he's talking about but it doesn't matter because he has covered the salient points and anyway, here is Five, coat on and glaring at them.

 

"Let's go," he says.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"I need to know something," says Five. He scowls, mostly from habit.

 

He, Klaus and the girl are out and looking for Brent. Breakfast was a little awkward, but luckily the girl has not mentioned last night nor made any further attempt at flirting. Which doesn't please his ego, but is better for a working partnership. "Where's the soul machine?"

 

She grimaces.

 

"I won't try to use it. You've made it very clear that it's complicated and deadly. Although obviously I have a lot of experience with complicated, deadly devices."

 

"You mustn't touch it," she says. "You in particular. You have a displaced soul. The machine will try to suck it out of your body."

 

"You have a displaced soul too," he points out.

 

"I have had a lot of practice in sticking to my container when the soul machine is active. You have none. Without a container, a soul dies."

 

"Except Ben." He glances sideways at her as they walk.

 

"Ben had Klaus."

 

"Yeah baby. I'm literally the glue that keeps body and soul together." Klaus, still munching toast, does a little sashay and punches the air.

 

Five concedes the point.

 

Klaus tosses the crust into the gutter and claps his hands. "Let's get this show on the road."

 

They have agreed that Brent is most likely to have gone somewhere his new, presumably younger body can have a little fun. On the assumption he's picked a young guy for his host, and that thirty years ago this was Brent's favourite part of town, they have come to the old mall.

 

It's a faded affair, ageing concrete and grainy pink floor tiles. This was cutting edge architecture back in the day, but nowadays malls are out of town ventures, and this neighbourhood effort just looks sad and half abandoned. It's still her best guess, however.

 

"I'll stroll around, look for old guys in young bodies, you two kids get donuts and," Klaus waves a hand, "whatever they had instead of lattes back then. The old guy should be easy to spot, he'll be the one dressed in beige complaining about the terrible music they play in stores."

 

He drifts away leaving Five and the girl in a circular atrium, beside a dirty looking pizza window and a dry fountain.

 

"Well," says Five. "He took the ground floor, let's cover upstairs. We'll find some youngsters, and start scanning."

 

_That's bad._

 

He didn't think it was a terrible plan. _Do you have a better idea?_

 

_Hush_. She touches his sleeve. _Those men by the pizza place._

 

He swivels round, sees two hulking figures with giveaway bulges under their coats. "Shit."

 

The Register.

 

 

 


	10. A beacon

"Hey. I got him. One soul, one body, definitely no license and registration."

 

Klaus rounds the corner of the mall and strolls across the tiles towards the dead fountain,where Five and the girl are frozen in indecision. He's holding an ice cream cone. "Just leave it to Klaus. Soul dectectorist numero uno."

 

Five waits in agony for Klaus, inevitably, to catch the attention of the two Registrars muttering outside the pizza slice place. Klaus in the open is like a beacon, the kind that whirls around flashing and whooping I'm here, look at me, I'm crazy and I'm here.

 

The two men are arguing and don't even glance at Klaus. Five hadn't realised but he has been holding his breath.

 

The girl's fingers are tight around Five's arm. She's slightly hurting him, but she's shaking. _It's all right._

 

_It's not!_

 

Klaus shimmies up to them, his mouth full of ice cream. "This tastes like they fed Oreos to a dead snake and then milked it. Want some?" He thrusts the cone in Five's face.

 

Five knocks Klaus' arm aside and hisses, "Over here."

 

The three of them quickstep back around the corner where Klaus came from. Ahead is the food court, a sad collection of brightly-lit unbranded fast food joints.

 

Five slides his arm free of the girl. "Where's Brent?"

 

Klaus says to the girl, "Is Brent an oldish black guy, none too tall, hips to die for?"

 

"Uh..."

 

"Loves the sound of his own voice, doesn't take so much as a breath between diatribes."

 

"That's him." Her eyes widen.

 

"Ok, well, now he's a _young_ black guy, size of a quarterback, can't stop talking and only the heavyweight heft of his meaty fists is keeping him from being punched out by his youthful comrades."

 

Klaus points at a group of young men sitting on tables in the food court. Most are eating, heads down, but a big guy is holding forth in a loud, domineering voice. He jabs his finger in the air with every sentence. His friends eat in solid silence.

 

Klaus stuffs the rest of the cone into his mouth. "It's weird, his soul is kind of loitering beside him, like a grandad who accidentally took the school bus and doesn't know how to get off."

 

The girl says, "Brent!" and darts towards the group.

 

Five grabs her. "Wait."

 

"Put me down."

 

"Wait!" _You can't just tackle him, you need the soul machine. If he sees you -_

 

_He won't know it's me -_

 

"-I think he'll guess from the fact that you're running at him shouting his name -"

 

'You two are so weird, you know that? I mean, the psychic sex must be sensational, but the one sided convos, ugh, how do you cope." Klaus pulls a face.

 

"They're not one sided," say Five and the girl simultaneously. They exchange glances. It's awkward, and hardly surprising Klaus has made the assumption he has.

 

Klaus hold up his hands. "No judgement here, but can we focus? Are we going to suck out this guy's soul, or what?

 

"We need the soul machine," says Five.

 

"I have it,"says the girl.

 

"What? Where?"

 

"Ok," says Klaus, "not to rush you, but-"

 

"Here." The girl pulls out the scanner from her pants pocket.

 

Five glares. _You had it all along._

 

"You didn't think I'd leave it in the hotel, did you?"

 

"Well clearly I did, because you didn't mention it." He folds his arms.

 

_I'm mentioning it now and don't take that tone with me._

 

"Uh, guys."

 

"What tone? I am helping you and I expect you to give me all the relevant information like, say, the fact that the soul machine is right here."

 

_I think you'll find Klaus is helping me and_ he _has nothing to gain from it._

 

"Is that what you think this is, I'm just here to get my old body back?"

 

_Well, isn't it?_

 

They glare at each other, nose to nose.

 

"Guys," says Klaus, inserting himself between them, "if you're gonna do that soul suck body swap thing, now would be the time."

 

Five whips around. "Dammit."

 

The Registrars are striding towards the group of young men.

 

"They'll kill him," says the girl, darting forward.

 

"They'll kill _you_ ," says Five, catching hold of her hand and pulling her back.

 

"For Pete's sake," says Klaus, and minces straight to the heart of the group. "Brent, hi, long time listener, first time caller, how are you?."

 

He stares at a space two feet to the left of the talkative young guy, who falls silent. The other guys draw back in surprise.

 

Brent says, "I don't know you, man."

 

"I'm here with a friend," says Klaus, "and not to alarm you, but some people from a sinister organisation called the Register are walking towards us right now, so it's in your best interests to -"

 

Brent shoves Klaus to the floor.

 

"No," says the girl. She springs for Brent with Five close behind her.

 

Klaus picks himself up from the floor. "Charming. You try to help a person, be a good citizen -"

 

"Hey," says the first Registrar. Both men pat their coat pockets. "Stay right where you are. All of you."

 

Klaus gives a mock salute and sprints away.

 

Brent is around the corner, heading for the exit. The girl is careering after him.

 

Five is fast, faster than he has been for thirty years. "Not a chance," he says, and flashes forward to catch up with Klaus and the girl.

 

Brent is gone. Behind them, the Registrars pull out their weapons.

 

Everybody runs.


	11. An OK team

 

 

Brent is hiding in the changing room of a department store, a terrible choice, not least because it is a dead end, and constructed of paper-thin, wobbly walls. This is the top floor of the department store and therefore the mall - a sad, lonely place devoid of luxury and shoppers alike.

 

The Registrars are somewhere blundering about down on the ground floor. Brent, with unerring stupidity, made straight for the stairs, and the girl went after him, forcing Five and Klaus to follow. Why do people think up equals out? In almost every case it equals dead end, and a rooftop showdown.

 

Five growls. The changing rooms are far from any exits and offer zero protection. The girl, bent on saving Brent's soul and clearing her name, appears to have forgotten that the Registrars will kill her too if - when - they get here. Five will not stick around to see that, and if she's really an old timer like him, neither will she. _Dammit. We actually could make an ok team._

 

_Thanks honey._

 

_Dammit D-_

 

He chops that thought off at the knees. He'll work _that_ little puzzle out later. Focus.

 

Brent is hiding in one of forty cubicles stretching away towards a padded wall at the far end. The curtains are mauve, the carpet is mauve. It's the women's changing rooms. Even better.

 

"Hey," calls Five, stepping cautiously into the hall of curtained nooks.  "We're..." He cannot bring himself to say, we're your friends. "We're here to help."

 

The girl is beside him, holding the scanner, or as he now knows, the soul machine. "Brent. We have to make this right."

 

Klaus is lookout by the entrance, and also, is helping himself to items from the Discard rail. "We're fully occupied, ma'am," he says as a female customer blunders in with an armful of dresses. The woman squeals as she sees Klaus, Five, and the girl. Klaus takes her by the shoulders and turns the woman back around. "The men's is free," he calls as she hurries away.

 

"You used a soul machine," says the girl to the wall of curtained changing cubicles. "You took a  body without permission. If the Registrars find you, they'll kill you. Give the body back now, and I'll carry your soul back to your family."

 

She tiptoes between the cubicles. "I have a machine. I took it and came to get you. The kid's soul is still in there, isn't it? Give his body back.  You'll be safe, I can carry your soul."

 

From farther up the row of changing cubicles comes a voice. "And do what? They think you're my neighbour's granddaughter! I can't even ask you on a date because you look like you're still in school!"

 

_Well, boo hoo._ Five plucks a wire coat hanger from the carpet, bends it to a useful shape, that is to say, a lethal one. 

 

The girl says, "Your family are worried sick, Brent. Come back to them now, before it's too late."

 

One of the curtains twitches. Brents voice hisses, "My family's worthless. You were my only friend and now look, you're hunting me like a dog."

 

"I want to  help you!"

 

"Leave me alone, you'll bring them right to me!"

 

"Brent, please. Come on," says the girl. 

 

_Yeah. Come on Brent. There are bad guys who want to hurt us,  and you're an asshole._

 

The girl shoots Five a dirty look. "None of us can go back to being young," she calls.

 

Five quirks an eyebrow at her.

 

"Whatever body we're in, we're still the same inside," she says. "Being in a young body doesn't fix anything. Listen, it usually turns out worse." She glances at Five.

 

_Ouch._

 

_Yeah, now you're getting it._

 

"Just go," hisses Brent.

 

_It's the end one. By the back wall_. Five gestures with the coat hanger.

 

_Yeah._

 

_You want me to -_

 

_No! This is my job._

 

The girl closes her eyes. "Brent, this is your last chance."

 

Five edges towards Brent's cubicle.

 

The girl flings out her arm, eyes still closed, and grips Five's wrist. _Stay back. I'm going to start the machine._

 

Five stops. Drops the coat hanger.

 

_Get behind me,_ she says. _If this catches you, it'll whip your soul back to your right body too, except-_

 

_Except I don't have one._

 

_So stay back. I don't want to hurt you._ For a moment she opens her eyes and their gazes lock _. I like you too much._

 

_Uh_... His brain is busy wondering how the soul machine works and he's temporarily forgotten how to do emotion. _Likewise_.

 

She shuts her eyes. Five backs off to the changing room entrance, and bats Klaus out of harm's way too.

 

The girl points the scanner at the cubicle. She touches buttons, and a whine begins, like a jet engine starting up on the runway.

 

The mauve curtain at the end cubicle begins to flap and swirl.

 

"No, don't you dare -" Brent bursts into the open, furious. He stops dead as be sees the girl holding the scanner.

 

"Let me help you," she repeats. "If I get your soul back, the Registrars might forgive us both."

 

"No way."

 

"Then -"

 

Brent launches himself at the girl, at a run, tensing for a full body tackle. 

 

Five springs forward, but he is too far away to be any use.

 

The girl stands her ground, and steadily points the device at Brent.

 

A white, howling void expands in front of her hands. Acid brightness glares, and the jet-engine whine swells and shrieks, rattling Five's skeleton.

 

The soul machine is open.


	12. His hidden heart

She grips the soul machine, presses her fingers in the secret combination known only to Registrars. The soul machine howls and spits out its tongue: its tunnel into the void. Any misplaced soul in its path will be sucked into the scanner, sealed up and held, ready for reimplantation.

 

Brent, mid-leap, drops to the mauve carpet. He wraps his arms around his head, as if that's where his soul is. Of course, he's just a civilian. He has no idea. None of them do.

 

"Let it go," she says. "Please, Brent. Relax. You'll be home before you know it."

 

Brent gets up. In his enormous quarterback body, he still struggles to make it to his feet, three yards from the soul machine.

 

"Don't," she says. Behind her she hears a scuffle as Five, or Klaus, restrains the other. "You two! Stay back!" Klaus is in no danger - his soul is his own - but if Five gets in the way, the soul machine will have him. She grits her teeth and braces her body against the force spiralling from the machine.

 

Brent sways as an invisible wind buffets him. "Put it down," he cries.

 

"No. You broke the law!"

 

"What are you, a saint? You got yourself a nice new body after the car wreck, walk around like new." Brent claws at the air, trying to walk forward. All the while, the void sucks at his soul, trying to detach it from the kid's body, wearing Brent down like a thousand years of waves on a cliff.

 

She presses harder on the machine, and the shriek of the soul machine rises, soaring into the ends of her ears until it vibrates her very brain. "I had the right," she says. "You didn't."

 

"Hey," says Five from behind her.

 

"Stay back!"

 

"If you're going to finish it, finish it. We got company."

 

The Registrars. Fear clutches her heart. Brent -

 

"Move!" Five's voice, and then Five himself, knocking her to the floor and the soul machine from her hands.

 

She kicks and flails because Brent is getting away - and then because of something else.

 

The two Registrars, of course, have their own soul machine, and they're pointing it at Brent. All the while, the void sucks at his soul, trying to detach it from the kid's body, wearing Brent down like a thousand years of waves on a cliff.

 

 

Five is too close to withstand such primordial force. Even his perfectly cold tenacity cannot overcome the soul machine, and it will leach away the rest of him, the slice that came back for his family, his hidden heart. She grapples with him, undignified on the carpet. _Listen to me, you mustn't do this-_

 

Five is pinning her down. He might be slight, but he's strong. But she's learned a trick or two herself over the years, when the punters have put up resustance. Not all souls want to be freed. In fact, none of them do. Five is the first person she's ever met who longs to be back in his old body. _Let go-_ She grabs Five and flings him off her. _Get out, get out, it will kill you-_

 

_I'm not leaving you-_

 

She lashes out and catches him a vicious whack to the side of the head. They roll on the carpet and the Registrars, shooting for Brent, step right over them.

 

"Guys," says Klaus, "now would be the optimal time to flee."

 

Five jumps to his feet and hauls at her hand.

 

_No_. She wrenches free and snatches up the dropped  soul machine, but Five catches her.

 

_Don't be stupid -_

 

They are wrestling in a women's changing room and it is beyond ridiculous.

 

Brent, weakened by exposure to the soul machine, is stumbling backwards. There's nowhere to run. The two big men smile nastily.

 

She can feel their soul machine tearing at her, too. She knows how to resist, but Brent does not, and neither does Five. She wriggles and kicks, but Five has her by the shoulders and is dragging her away.

 

"Time to go," says the first guy to Brent. He thrusts his scanner toward Brent.

 

Brent turns, shoulder-barges the flimsy wall of the cubicle, and smashes clean through it.

 

"No." She cannot believe it. If he runs now, his soul half-attached, she doesn't know what might happen. Nothing good. "Stop!"

 

Five seizes the scanner from her hands.

 

_You can't operate it-_

 

_I know._

 

His touch on the soul machine triggers its defences. He aims at the Registrars, and as nails and ink fly, both men drop to the ground.

 

Five snooths out his blazer and holds out his hand to her. He's smiling.

 

"We have to find Brent," she gasps.

 

His fingers are warm around hers. "Whatever you say."

 

Klaus is already scrambling through the wall. "Hey. This is somewhat peculiar..." His outline grows dim into the dark space beyond.

 

She stands. The two Registrars are floored, but not for long. They won't understand that she was trying to set this right. They've seen the stolen soul machine, and doubtless Five too, apparently in a stolen body. Things could not be any worse.

 

There's no way out of this one, which is a shame, because Five is the kind of man she could get used to. Even looking like he does right now, like she does right now. She can wait.

 

"Let's go," says Five.

 

She wants to, but she cannot. There's only one thing to do.

 

"Klaus," she says towards the dark gap where Klaus is poking about for Brent, "Klaus, he's right behind you!"

 

As Klaus and Five both spin round in alarm, she twists free of Five's hand, and leaps over the fallen Registrars, through the hole in the drywall, and after Brent.

 


	13. The colour of grief

 

Five stumbles through the hole in the drywall and finds himself in a small, dark corridor. Klaus is poking about with no urgency. Five grimaces, and flashes to the far end of the corridor where a zigzag shutter marks the back of a service elevator. He presses the Call button and counts as the elevator rises. Then it clunks to a stop. Five wrenches open the shutter, and without waiting for Klaus, steps inside.

 

Five squints at the grubby numbers on the plate. B for Basement. He punches it, and counts again as the elevator descends the same duration as it took to reach him. Unsurprisingly, the journey ends at the very bottom.

 

Why do people flee to dead ends?

 

The girl must have been with Brent, or following him. She knows better than this.

 

Brent doesn't, and now Five is stuck with it too. He sighs.

 

It's dark down here. He exits the elevator and pulls shut the metal door. As it grinds and screams home, he slaps his hand against the wall either side of the door, and finds a light switch. He flips it, but only a solitary orange bulb hisses into life, fifty feet away in a vast, lumpy black space.

 

He peers around and sees legs, dozens of them, stacked sideways on the floor like firewood.

 

A second later he realises they are the plastic remains of store dummies.

 

As well as the severed limbs, he sees plastic hangers strewn across the floor, a bed of cracks and snaps should he walk that way. Sagging cardboard cartons spill styrofoam nuggets in a silent pink avalanche. Clothes rails ram one another, criss-crossing at awkward angles.

 

The place is a dump, and also, a terrible place to be stealthy. No way is the inept Brent still here. Five would hear him a mile off. But the girl is clever.

 

He calls out. It's frustrating not to have her name. _Hey._ Is it possible to whisper in your mind? Is it possible to shout?

 

He treads across the floor. Plastic shatters under his shoes.  If the girl is here, he'll know the instant she moves.

 

He searches as best he can in the thin plane of light from the service elevator window. There's no sign of her.

 

A shriek pierces the quiet: the elevator door. Five ducks down, ready to jump away, but it's only Klaus.

 

"Five. Hey, bro. Mi hermano. Come out, man."

 

Five flashes to Klaus and grabs him by the collar. "Shut up. They'll hear us."

 

He glares, and jerks his head up, towards where they left the Registrars, unconscious in the changing room.

 

"You look peaky, man. Are you ok?" Klaus squints into Five's face. "Wait-"

 

For once Five does not complain as Klaus pats him down in a pastiche of an airport security guard. "You're all there, bro. Soul intact."

 

"Get off me." Relief makes Five irritable. He pushes Klaus aside. "We have to find her."

 

"If only we had someone who can see detached souls."

 

"All right, I get it, do your thing."

 

Klaus rolls his eyes. "What's the magic word?"

 

"Now."

 

"Temper, temper. He's over there." Klaus points languorously towards the back wall. "Don't thank me."

 

Five darts forward, then stops. "Where's the girl?"

 

Klaus shakes his head. "I see Brent's soul. Not hers."

 

That's good. Or is it? Five flashes to the far end of the basement, leaving Klaus to pick his way through store-fitting debris. He glances back to warn Klaus to be quiet. Klaus gives him the finger. Situation normal.

 

_Hey._

 

Nothing. Is it limited by proximity? Why would a psychic link have any restrictions?

 

Is she dead? The soul machine caught her in its field as well as Brent.

 

He shakes off that thought and casts about among fallen shopping carts. Whatever happens, the Registrars will be on their feet and searching by now. When they switch on their soul machine, Brent, the girl and Five will all be toast.

 

The orange bulb overhead makes everything look like grief - monochrome, all meaning drained from shapes and shadow. He could search forever in here and not find her among the myriad colourless lumps of old sacking and smashed cartons. Podium displays loom at peculiar angles. He smells dust, burning on the lightbulb.

 

_Hey._

 

Still nothing.

 

Klaus is halfway across the basement, whispering curses as he bumps into clutter. Beyond him, Five sees the elevator rise. Shit. Neither of them thought to leave the door open so it couldn't be called. The Registrars are coming.

 

He casts about but everything is shadowed. _Where are you?_

 

Don't let her be dead. Please.

 

_Five._

 

She's six feet away behind a collapsed glass counter. She's bent over Brent's body, or more accurately, over the body that Brent stole. "He's alive."

 

"Brent?"

 

"The kid. Brent steamrollered him, but his real soul is still in there. He needs a hospital."

 

Five brushes that aside. "The Registrars are on their way."

 

That gets her attention. "Where."

 

"Elevator."

 

Klaus stumbles up to them.

 

The girl stands, and says, "It's me they want. You two have to go."

 

Five wraps his hand around her arm. "No way. Come with us."

 

The girl doesn't pull away. "They won't be satisfied until they've taken my soul. If you get in the way, yours will go too. Klaus, take him."

 

"Just come with us," insists Five.

 

"You don't understand. They're relentless. The punishment for the theft of a soul must be absolute and final. It's the only deterrent." She glances at Five's hand, still on her arm.

 

He doesn't let go. "That's stupid, deterrents don't work, everyone knows that."

 

"...It's true. Look at cigarette packs. Pictures of rotting lungs and still we all keep puffing away."

 

"Shut up Klaus."

 

"Brent's gone," says the girl. She shakes her head. "Maybe his soul made it back to his body, but I doubt it. The machine was at full power. Even I couldn't keep it together for long, faced with that. Brent didn't stand a chance. You have to leave, and leave now." She lays her hand over Five's. "They won't give you the opportunity to explain. They'll see an illegal soul, and kill it. It's what Registrars do."

 

_You didn't._

 

_I'm too soft for this job._

 

_Then quit._ "This could work." He nods at their hands, fingers linked. She says nothing, just smiles. In his head, a sensation blooms, a warmth that comes from someone else, someone nicer than he is. The feeling spreads to his chest and tingles right through him. Oh. It's been a while, but he recognises that sensation: a kiss. He blinks. "Come on." 

 

"Hmmm." _Oh Five. You think you're icy cold but I know better._

 

He was a good kisser himself, back in the day. Never got any complaints. _Not cold. Just busy._   

 

Klaus looks from the girl to Five. "Yeah, really hoping the inside voices are making a better job of this."

 

The girl says, "They're here."


	14. An open window

 

It begins as an itch in the back of his head, a tug like a breeze through an open window. It lifts his hair, then strokes his scalp. Five shakes his head.

 

The itch persists, a niggling at his skull, going deeper, tearing at his chest. It's inside him, stirring him up, jumbling his thoughts.

 

"Man oh man," says Klaus, staring at nothing in the orange gloom. "That's one hell of a hoover."

 

Five slaps at the back of his head. "What are you talking about?"

 

Klaus says, "Hey, Joe, where you going?" A pause. "You still owe me five bucks!"

 

Five grips Klaus' collar. "Talk to me."

 

"The souls. They're... Being sucked towards the elevator." Klaus' eyes are as wide as cracked eggs.

 

"I told you! Now go," says the girl.

 

Now Five sees it, a white, howling tornado emerging from the elevator. Indistinct beyond it are two dark figures.  Their soul machine is switched on.

 

"There has to be a back door," says Klaus.

 

"We're in the basement," says Five.

 

"Oh yeah."

 

"Get down," says the girl. She grabs Five by the sleeve and jerks him aside. "Klaus. Behind here."

 

_Here_ is a solid wood set of drawers from at least fifty years ago, lying on its side. Its compartments have tiny brass label plates: Ties, Gloves, Driving Gloves.

 

Klaus sprawls flat like a sniper in a jungle. Five and the girl are crushed together between Cufflinks and Cravats.

 

"Let me kill them," he says.

 

"I can't. The minute you stand up they'll blast you. We need a distraction, then we can run."

 

"I can -"

 

"No. This is mine to do." She gazes into Five's eyes. "Don't worry, I won't let them take me." _Hey. One thing._ She smiles, touches his cheek.

 

Five waits, expecting her to speak, but instead she simply stands up.

 

And Five has to watch, helpless as the white tornado of the soul machine whips over his head and hits the girl with full force in the chest. She smiles, wavers and drops, lifeless into his arms.

 

* * *

 

 

"No!"

 

_See you later,_ says the girl, inside Five's mind. Her eyes flutter and close.

 

Five shakes her. _Don't be stupid. This is suicide._

 

_No it's not._

 

She won't open her eyes. Five finds a pulse in her wrist, faint and stuttering. A body can't survive without a soul, she said. And a soul needs a body - what she called a container. Five chokes back a laugh, or a sob. The Registrars aren't going to put her anywhere. They're going to let her go.

 

Klaus peeks round the edge of the shelves. "That thing's still on. Boy, I've never been so alone, I ought to be celebrating."

 

All around them the white wind howls. Packing tape, labels, receipts fly up and whirl around in the tornado. Hangers rattle on the rails. Five's head is jumbled, his thoughts paper-thin.

 

"Come on, man," says Klaus. He gestures at something unseen beside Five. Five gets a shiver as he realises that Klaus is looking at his partially-detached soul. Klaus says, "You're hanging by a thread here." 

 

He peeks around the shelving again. "And now they're getting some really weird guns out. Big. Big and -  the word that springs to mind is _phallic_. All I can say is someone's got a major complex about the size of his - " The shelf beside Klaus' head explodes. Klaus and Five scramble aside.

 

"I'm gonna kill them," says Five. The girl isn't breathing. He holds her in his lap, although it's pointless, there's nothing he can do for her now.  "I'm gonna kill them all."

 

"Yeah, you know, maybe later, when they're done shooting at us?" Klaus hangs onto Five's arm. "Right now, let's leave. Do your thing."

 

"No."

 

_Klaus, make him_.  The girl's voice. It's loud.

 

Klaus gasps.  Somehow, from the edge of death, she spoke to Klaus. Or - Klaus heard her for a worse reason. Five swallows.

 

Klaus grabs Five. "Got to go bro. Do what the woman said."

 

The girl's mouth slackens. Her soul is flying away.  Five says, "But." He can't say the word. Never could. _Love_ isn't in his out-loud vocabulary.

 

Her eyes are shut. Klaus drags at Five. Five resists with vicious kicks until Klaus clocks him over the head. Disoriented, he goes momentarily limp.

 

Klaus seizes his chance and hauls bodily at Five. "It's over. Let's go little bro. Let's go-"

 

Klaus is right. They cannot fight any more. There's no way out of the basement except past the Registrars and their assorted weapons, including the soul machine.  That will get Five. Then the Registrars will kill Klaus with the giant submarine-shaped guns or even just a regular firearm if they happen to have one with them.  Five shuts his eyes. The warm, melodic voice in his head is silent, and the girl slips from his arms.

 

Five lets out a cry of fury and grief, then wraps his arms around Klaus and flashes away.


	15. An Apocalypse of Unwanted Things

When he gets home Dolores, the imagined Dolores in his head, gives him a rough time over the whole business, which is not surprising. _I know I screwed up, OK? I let her distract me when I should have been listening, should have picked up the signs._

 

 _No, I was_ not _hoping for more than a kiss. Dammit Dolores. You know I’d never-_

 

_I didn't let her, she just did it._

 

_You think what you like, she's dead. That matters more to me than your misplaced jealousy._

 

Another drink later he can't stand the silence any more. “I'm sorry,” he whispers. “I let her down, I let you down.”

 

He thinks this will be enough to get her attention. After all, an apology from him is practically gold dust.

 

But there's no reply, nothing, no sound at all except the clink of a tumbler on the neck of a bottle.

 

* * *

 

 

He sleeps for fourteen hours and then rises in an absolutely foul temper. His siblings stay well clear. Klaus brings him coffee with a pantomime of extreme terror, but for once says nothing. None of them do, they just look at him with sad eyes and wry, pitying smiles.

 

Their pity is worse than their gabbling.

 

He drinks coffee, drinks some more, throws in a slug of whisky and drinks more.

 

Now he’s OK. He’s fine. And, even though the girl is gone, he can go and look for her soul machine. There’s a chance the Registrars didn’t find it in the chaos of the chase.

 

There’s a chance it will still work, and can put him back in his old body… if he can find that.

 

He knows it’s hopeless, even as he lies to Klaus about going out for donuts. He ignores the poor logic and the fact that sentiment is driving him to search the basement for … something. 

 

He walks to the old mall, slouching, watching the traffic. It’s weird here. No phones, no internet in your hand. He only experienced the so-called present-day for a brief period, but he liked the internet very much. Back here, everything is old school.

 

And because he abandoned his one true friend, and screwed up his chance of making another one, he is alone.

 

Suddenly he tires of walking, and flashes directly to the department store.

 

By a long-odds coincidence the soul machine is on the floor in the women’s changing room, right where he’d pointed it at the Registrars. He picks it up in his handkerchief, and turns it over. It appears dead.

 

Typical. But perhaps it can be fixed. Perhaps it holds more clues to the Registrars, or clues to aliens, and powers.

 

There is, ostensibly, no need to go to the basement. He’s found what he came looking for.

 

Hasn’t he?

 

He is in the elevator, then in the basement again, before he can justify his actions.

 

This time, he finds the light switch and uses it. 

 

The place is a wreck. Store props and worthless stock. An apocalypse of unwanted things. Story of his life.

 

_Not just your life._

 

Her voice, tinted lilac now like an echo. Five whirls around.

 

_I have spent my life preventing other people living theirs. Monitoring how they used the privilege of a fresh body, punishing them if they were not worthy. Believe me, it sucks more that the soul machine._

 

“Where are you?” he whispers.

 

Now she's silent. 

 

“Are you dead, or not? What happened?” Why can he hear her? Is this his mind again, playing tricks? Who, exactly, is he imagining?

 

 _I'm sorry,_ she says. _I would have told you. But I was afraid you'd stop me._

 

 _From killing yourself, yes. Damn right._ He puts down the soul machine, and hunts about. If she’s here, he’s going to find her. 

 

_That wasn't my plan. I screwed up. Have you ever screwed up, Five?_

 

A dig, at a time like this! “You know I have.”

 

_So cut me a little slack. This wasn't my intention, I promise you._

 

“Where are you?”

 

He knows, now,  what she's done. When she stood up to take the brunt of the Registrars’ attack, it wasn’t suicide. Not quite.

 

She’s got her soul sucked out of her - and into some object, some worthless piece of junk that will dry out her soul until there's nothing of her left. Nobody talks to a toaster.

 

 _It's all right,_ she says.

 

“It's not all right, dammit. You know it.”

 

_I know you're too stubborn to accept defeat._

 

“I can't believe you would do this.” 

 

Silence. Then she says, _Why did you come after me?_

 

“I -” She has a point. And by beginning a sentence, he just admitted to her, and himself, that it was her he came back for.  “I don’t know,” he says. For once, he feels very young.

 

There's a ripple in his mind. She's laughing.

 

“Nothing about this is funny,” he says.

 

_You have to have a sense of humour to survive._

 

He rubs his hands over his eyes. “Please. Just tell me where you are. I promise I will …”

 

_Talk to me every day for thirty years?_

 

He freezes. “What are you talking about? Where are you?” Talking. Talking to her will keep her soul alive. Klaus did it for Ben, and Ben had no container at all. Five begins tearing at the junk. One of these useless junkpiles contains her. One of them _is_ her. He scrambles over boxes and bags, tumbling their contents haphazardly across the floor.

 

 _Right here,_ she says. _And I'm already dying for a drink._

 

“Where-” And then he sees it.

 

The basement holds a million objects, but the object nearest to Five right now is a mannequin.

 

Not just any mannequin. This mannequin’s face is smooth and new, and as the fluorescent lights flicker overhead, Five sees that she has large bright eyes and a serene, loving expression.

 

He freezes. His throat is dry. Words will not come. 

 

He picks her up, wraps her in a nearby packing sheet, and sits with her in his arms. He cannot speak. She says nothing as he wipes her cheek with his thumb.

 

At last he says, “What's your name?”

 

And she tells him.

 

THE END


End file.
